Tag Archives: bohlen-pierce

Fragments of a Bohlen-Pierce Composition (Pt 4)

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Since Friday, I’ve had almost nil in terms of time to work on fragments. The little time I did have, I put together an additive synthesizer prototype, which I call Tadd for the time being; short for Table Additive Synthesizer. Perhaps I should be calling it tads? It’s very rough, glitchy and a bit poppy, but I love it.

Download: fragments_4.csd

I’m not going to go into the details on how it works here. It’s still in early development, and I plan on only using it in a rough state for fragments. It’s a time constraint thing. Beyond this Bohlen-Pierce piece, I have some big ideas for Tadd, and will most likely write an article about it for the Csound Journal. In the mean time, if anyone has an questions about it, I’d be happy to answer.

Where am I with the piece? I now have a pretty good idea what my final instrumentation will be like. Effects will play a major role in this. I’m considering writing a stutter delay buffer, and possibly a trippy space dub echo machine. There will be heavy use of note generating algorithms present. Timbre wise, it could use one more instrument that contrasts the FM and additive sounds. I’m thinking granular.

There is the question of whether or not to do this in 4-channel quadraphonic surround. If there is time, I’ll give it a try. Though technically speaking, I’m not set up for it here. I’m not ruling it out, yet.

As for a metaphor for what the piece is about… That’s just now coming to me, but it’ll take me a few more days before it truly begins to manifest. The one thing I’m hoping to avoid is to use the Bohlen-Pierce scale as a gimmick rather than a primary element of the piece.

Note to self: listen to more Autechre this week.

Fragments of a Bohlen-Pierce Composition (Pt 3)

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Whenever I start a piece, especially one based in old school computer music, I usually find myself working in a compositional clean room. What I mean by this is I usually have to spend many hours writing synthesis code that produces very sterile sounding textures and blips that lacks both depth and soul before moving on. Sometimes I never actually make it beyond this point. To be completely honest, I kinda dig the sound of it. However, I made promise to myself right before the new year that I’m going to force myself to get out of my comfort zone. This means taking off the clean suite, getting outside and playing in the mud. Where “mud” is obviously alluding to the organic. (note: there is some dripping sarcasm in the last line) Though I’m making a joke, mostly intended for myself, there is some truth to this.

As for Fragments, though I’m still in that clean room, I’m starting to make the transition. Today’s example is that first step, and very small one at that. I’m spending more time on the overall sound of the piece, space and structure. As opposed to just creating a process and letting it run for x amount of minutes.

One thing of particular interest is that I’m applying Bohlen-Pierce ratios and proportions to various elements of the piece. Such as note duration, envelope, next start times, FM modulation indexes and ratios, etc. Though I can’t claim this idea as mine, as it came from friend and mentor Dr. Richard Boulanger who had suggested it to me in an email.

Fragments 3: fragments_3.csd

Fragments of a Bohlen-Pierce Composition (Pt 2)

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Though my intention is not to produce a phasing piece for the Bohlen-Pierce Symposium, I am using this technique, made famous by composer Steven Reich, as a vessel to get some of the harmonies of the tuning system into my head. Already, I feel there are some potential melodies, chords and even interesting rhythms that are jumping out at me that I could potentially use in a final piece. Though there is still a long, long road in front of me.

Bohlen-Pierce Etude for Three Phasing FM Voices
bpe4tpfmv.csd

Fragments of a Bohlen-Pierce Composition (Pt 1)

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I’ve recently been invited to compose a piece for the first symposium on the Bohlen-Pierce scale, which takes place in Boston a month from now. This will be very challenging personally since I’ve never composed using this tuning. I’ve decided, after a little encouragement, to blog about my progress.

I’m doing the piece with Csound, which should come as no surprise. Minus a few scribbled notes in my journal, I have no idea what I’m going to do or where I expect this piece will sound like a month from today. Since time is of essence, I’ve started putting some code into a text file, and have come up with this csd: bp_day_1.csd.

At this point, it produces a series of random just intonation Bohlen-Pierce notes, which are  fed to a monophonic FM portamento synth, and processed with a delay and a reverb unit. A humble beginning for sure.